Wednesday, 6 June 2018

Rehanging the Iron Curtain

We’ve been energized with
the change in direction by the award-winning writer Jon
Courtenay Grimwood, moving deep into Thriller territory, with last year’s Moskva
and this year with the follow-up Nightfall
Berlin which we reviewed at Shots, stating –

Back in the 1980s with what appears to be a thawing of the Cold War,
British Intelligence’s Tom Fox is sent covertly to East Germany (specifically
the Soviet controlled sector of Berlin), to ex-filtrate a defector back to the
Western sector. As a backdrop to the operation, the geo-political stage is set
with the Nuclear Arms negotiations between East and West.

As ever and fuelled by paranoia, our Major becomes a Fox on the Run,
as the mission takes a curious and dark turn. The target for Fox’s
ex-filtration mission, the defector Cecil Blackburn is someone that raises
troubling questions back at British Intelligence. There are suspicions raised
about his motives for his return to the West.